SortStack #900 — 2028-11-25
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- A car airbag inflating after a crash 30 ms
The bag must fully inflate before your head arrives — roughly ten times faster than the blink of an eye, driven by a controlled chemical explosion.
- An amber traffic light before it turns red 4 sec
Amber phases are tuned to road speed — typically 3 seconds in town and up to 6 on fast roads, calculated from braking distance physics.
- The Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon's 'Battle of the Nations' 4 days
With around 600,000 soldiers from over a dozen nations, the 1813 clash was Europe's largest battle until the First World War.
- A chicken egg's incubation, laying to hatching 21 days
Chicks start cheeping to their mother through the shell a day or two before hatching — and she clucks back to encourage them out.
- The Holy Roman Empire, from Otto the Great to its dissolution 844 years
Voltaire quipped it was 'neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire' — yet it lasted 844 years before Napoleon finished it off in 1806.
- How long Jericho has been continuously inhabited 10.8K years
Among the world's oldest cities, Jericho's stone tower predates pottery itself — people built monuments before they made bowls.